News at Another Perspective

Category: Politics

I recently posted a controversial statement from an anonymous source. First off, I want to make it clear to readers that the covert agent piece was the first anonymous source I have ever worked with. I was aware of the fact that I would be attacked for putting up the piece. It was a difficult decision and I went with it on the belief that the content of the message would out weigh the controversial source. The message was given to me because much of what was said touched on research that I had done in a previous version of my book.

Some people feel strongly that the message was from a legitimate inside source, while others think that it was just from a well-informed political observer trying to get attention on the important issues mentioned and the seven action items. I’ll leave the debate over the source of the message to others. In the end though, I posted the piece because I felt the overall power of the message was too strong to be ignored and just filed away. I feel as if I made the right decision, because the message has inspired passionate response from many people. With very minimal outreach effort, I have already received over five thousand emails regarding the piece.

This part of the message, in particular, has received much attention:

“I firmly believe Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense and Bush Sr.’s right-hand man in the covert world, used computer cryptography and software security assets to get Bush Jr. elected both times. I do not have direct knowledge of the operation, but research ‘Robert Gates,’ ‘Bill Owens,’ ‘electronic voting security,’ ‘HAVA,’ ‘VoteHere’ and ‘Scientific Applications International Corp.’ The operation went so well that Gates was going to be made the first ever Director of National Intelligence. He turned down the job, but then took the Secretary of Defense position when Rumsfeld was removed from his public position. I don’t think there will ever be solid evidence linking directly to members of the administration; it’s all a tangled web of plausible deniability. But I do think it will eventually be proven that the elections were manipulated to deliver Bush the victory. Many people in the covert world take this for granted, as common sense.”

The statement above, in conjunction with research I’ve done for my book, led me to some extraordinarily interesting insights that still need to be investigated further. I will present everything I know at this point and hope that you, and everyone that reads this, will help launch an investigation into this vital matter. Some of what I present here will already be known to election theft researchers, however, as far as I can tell, it has not all been pieced together in one concise document like this. Like I said though, if you have more information, please share it.

Before I get into Robert Gates and Bill Owens’ role in this, let me give some background information on the electronic voting machine industry and manipulation of past elections.

Private Control of the US Voting System:
“In the seventeen years I’ve been an election administrator; my experience is that… the American electoral system is rotten and we need to deal with that…. We are hostage to the desires of private interests to conduct the most public of our procedures, public elections…. You could steal the election and no one would ever know.” — Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Florida recount in the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential race.

If voting is the foundation of democracy, why have we turned over our elections to private corporations? Over 87% of the US vote is counted on voting machines provided by three private corporations: Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia.

Some facts about the US Electronic Voting System:

It has been demonstrated that voting machines can be hacked into within 10 seconds – without any traceable evidence.
The memory cards that store the vote totals have been found to have executable codes on them. These codes allow the memory card vote totals to be altered – without any traceable evidence.
The central tabulator system, which adds up all the vote totals to give final results, can easily be hacked into and totals can be altered within a few minutes – without any traceable evidence.
These voting machines have consistently caused major vote-counting “irregularities.” It has been proven time and time again that these machines give unreliable vote counts. The Election Science Institute reported that 75% of the machines that they examined had inaccurate vote totals.

Key findings from the report:

“The machines’ four sources of vote totals… did not agree with one another. The current election system appears to provide some of its promised benefits at potentially great cost; namely, that the election system, in its entirety, exhibits shortcomings with extremely serious consequences…. These shortcomings merit urgent attention. Relying on this system in its present state should be viewed as a… heightened risk of unacceptable cost.”

Exit polls for years have consistently (in thousands of vote races) been very accurate – often coming within fractions of one percentage point of predicting the outcome of elections. However, when it comes to predicting the outcome of elections conducted on electronic voting machines, the polls have been off by more than ten percentage points – an unprecedented margin of error.

The most trusted exit polling was done by the Edison/Mitofsky Election System. Their exit polls for the overall 2004 presidential election were off by 5.5% – their largest discrepancy ever. They had Kerry winning by 3%. However, it was “officially” record that Bush won the election by 2.5%. In precincts that used hand counted paper ballots the exit polls were, as usual, LESS THAN ONE percentage point off. However, in precincts that used some form of electronic voting system the exit polls were, ON AVERAGE, OVER TEN percentage points off.

With regard to the 2004 presidential election, Republican pollster Dick Morris discussed the “virtually inconceivable” errors of the exit polls in the pivotal battleground states of Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada and Colorado, summing up the occurrences by saying:

“Exit polls are almost never wrong… So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries…. To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible!”

Once again in Florida, especially in Democratic leaning counties, a University of Cal Berkley study uncovered an “inexplicable 130,000- 260,000 additional votes for President Bush.” Again, numerous irregularites were seen through swing states and an overwhelming percentage of them went in Bush’s favor.

It wasn’t just these battleground states though. In Oklahoma a conservative newspaper reported that Kerry was winning 57 of 77 counties with 70% of the vote in. However, Kerry ended up losing all 77 counties, every one of them. In the closing moments of the election, Kerry magically lost over 35,000 votes and Bush gained 394,000 votes. These counties claimed that the machines began counting minus votes for Kerry. In Pennsylvania, many voters testified that machines were set to “default to Bush.” As I said before, the list goes on and on.

To be clear, election manipulation is not just on the presidential level. There are many instances and clear examples of congressional and state election manipulation as well.

If these two presidential elections were purposely stolen using electronic voting machines, we must then try to figure out who could have pulled this off. Let’s now take a look at the history of the voting machine industry.

“Former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell writes that one of the favorite tactics of the CIA during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s was to control countries by manipulating the election process…. Documents illustrate that the Reagan and Bush administration supported computer manipulation in both Noriega’s rise to power in Panama and in Marcos’ attempt to retain power in the Philippines. Many of the Reagan administration’s staunchest supporters were members of the Council for National Policy.” — Dr. Bob Fitrakis, Senior Editor, The Free Press

The quote above is significant because the original funders of the first major US electronic voting machine company, Data Mark (which is now ES&S), were the evangelical Christian Ahmanson family. Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr. was a member of the secretive Council for National Policy, a rightwing organization that featured members such as John K. Singlaub (a founding member of the CIA), Ku Klux Klan leader Richard Shoff, Oliver North and other Iran-Contra figures, and many other hard-right ideologues.

The Ahmanson family has given hundreds of millions of dollars to various conservative initiatives. They fund groups that push for the teaching of creationism in schools and are main contributors to the infamous Chalcedon Institute, which supports mandating the death penalty for gays, exclusion of citizenship for non-Christians, and if that wasn’t enough, bringing back slavery.

In the halls of power they are most well known for starting one of the most powerful think tanks in the world, the Heritage Foundation, which was a major policy provider for the Reagan administration. Their family fortune was given a huge boast in the wake of the Savings and Loan scandal in the late ’80s when then President George Bush Sr. enacted The Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), which allowed their company, Home Savings of America, to acquire 17 other companies at “fire sale” prices.

Data Mark was run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich. Bob became the CEO of the company and Todd was a top executive. They both wrote the software programs for the voting machines.

After the name of the company was changed to American Information Systems (AIS), the Ahmanson family later sold some of their interests in the company to the McCarthy Group. Michael McCarthy, founder of the McCarthy Group, and Chuck Hagel, a major financial backer, took control of the company. When Hagel became the company’s Chairman of the Board that freed up Bob Urosevich to leave the company and start the other major voting machine company Diebold Election Systems. However, his brother Todd stayed on as a top executive at AIS.

Chuck Hagel then decided to blatantly exploit the situation and run for a senate seat in Nebraska, despite never holding public office before. He then chose McCarthy to be his campaign finance director. In 1996, after computerizing Nebraska’s vote, Hagel stepped down from his chairman position of AIS (hiding the fact that he even held the position) and went on to beat a very popular incumbent Democrat in what media outlets called a “stunning, major upset.” He became the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years. He even won many African-American communities that had never before voted Republican. And… it was done on his (AIS) unauditable machines, the machines his company had just sold to the state.

In 1997, AIS acquired a Texas based election company, Cronus Industries, which was owned by the Hunt oil family, and changed the name of the company again to its current name, Election Systems & Software (ES&S). The Hunt family, like the Ahmanson family, was also original funders and members of the Council for National Policy.

This all means that the two Urosevich brothers, supported by the Ahmanson family and their Council for National Policy cohorts, directly control over 80% of the US vote. The only people who can confirm the legitimacy and true outcome of our elections are top executives of these companies.

Getting back to Diebold, Bob Urosevich put Walden W. O’Dell in charge of the company. O’Dell was a major funder and fundraiser for the Bush campaign and after having a “strategy session” with George Bush at his Crawford, Texas ranch he wrote the following fundraising letter in 2003: “I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year.” Shortly thereafter, Diebold completely revamped Ohio’s voting system. Also, a little known fact is that former ES&S Chairman (now Nebraska senator) Chuck Hagel was originally on a very short list to be Bush’s running mate and choice for Vice President in 2000. This while another major ES&S lobbyist, Sandra Mortham, played a significant role in Jeb Bush’s gubernatorial election.

Now, if all this is not shady enough, enter HAVA.

The greatest piece of legislation the Electronic voting machine companies ever got was the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). This opened up the flood-gates for electronic machines mandating that all states use them. However, surprisingly, ES&S, Diebold and Sequoia were not the biggest lobbyists for this bill. A company called VoteHere (changed name to Dategrity) spent more money trying to pass HAVA through Congress than all those companies combined. If you look at the backers of HAVA, you’ll find a Who’s Who list of military industrial companies and top-ranking intelligence officials. Other than VoteHere, companies like Northrop-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin were supporters, having military companies meddling in the election process is an astonishingly frightening conflict of interest, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.

After former VoteHere engineer Dan Spillane identified 250 flaws in their election computer certification process, he was fired. Spillane told Bev Harris of Blackbox voting, “The voting machine industry is a house of cards. And the certification and testing process is the bottom card in the house of cards.”

So let’s get to the bottom of this house of cards.

Who is this VoteHere company? VoteHere “aspires to provide cryptography and computer software security for the electronic election industry.” Basically, they want total control of the “security” on all electronic voting machines. As of right now, it appears that Diebold and Sequoia use VoteHere cryptography in their voting systems. They also have a deal with election systems in the UK.

Who is involved in this ambitious enterprise?

VoteHere founder and President is Jim Adler, a cryptography expert who worked for General Dynamics Space Systems / Lockheed Martin. VP of Finance and Administration, K.C. Watkins came to VoteHere after seventeen years with Accenture. Accenture was another big supporter of HAVA. Accenture, who used to be an arm of the infamous Arthur Andersen, is a member of USCSI (a WTO organization), and US Trade, a group that supports fast track trade authority. Accenture recently bought Election.com and are providing “comprehensive election solutions to governments worldwide.” They were involved in a scandal in Canada when they were contracted to overhaul Ontario’s welfare system. They projected that the contract would cost $50 million, but when the total cost reached $246 million, the government was forced to drastically cut welfare. Not surprising that a WTO and fast track trade company would run the welfare system into the ground though, is it? But let’s not get fast tracked, I mean, sidetracked.

VoteHere formed a partnership with Advanced Voting Solutions. AVS is run by Howard Van Pelt, who was once CEO of Diebold and ran Global Elections. He was also President of the scandalous Shoup Voting Solutions (now Advanced Voting Solutions). Shoup Voting officers were indicted for bribing politicians in Florida and founder Ransom Shoup was convicted of conspiracy and obstruction charges in rigging a Philadelphia election. Van Pelt has also been an adamant supporter of not having machines that leave a paper trail.

This is where it gets even more interesting…

Current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was on the VoteHere board of directors. Gates is of course a former CIA Director; Iran-Contra conspirator; close personal friend of George Bush Sr.; CIA Director under him and was head of the George Bush School of Business at Texas A&M. He was Bush Jr.’s first choice to be the first ever Director of National Intelligence, a position created shortly after 9/11. VoteHere was not Gates’ first election machine company, he was also a board member of TRW Cogent, a Northrup Grumman company.

VoteHere’s former Chairman is Admiral Bill Owens, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a member of the Defense Policy Board and he even served as a military aide to both Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, who also worked with Bush Sr. at the Carlyle Group. However, other than Gates and Owens being cronies of Bush Sr. and Cheney and sitting on the VoteHere board together, they also have another pivotal connection. They were both top executives at Scientific Applications International Corp. (SAIC). Owens was the President and CEO of SAIC and Gates was a board member. This is significant because SAIC has been involved in testing security standards for the voting machine industry. So you have VoteHere providing the security and SAIC testing the security. Both are companies that were run by Robert Gates and Bill Owens. I would think that it is logical to say that if there were anyone who could get away with rigging the elections, it would be top executives at these two companies working together. And who better to pull this off than SAIC?

Ion Sancho, a Florida supervisor of elections, was chosen to lead the Florida recount in the 2000 Bush v. Gore presidential race. Ion stated that in the 2000 presidential election “someone consciously tried to… perpetuate a fraud, to steal votes…. We need more audits. We need recounts…. Trust no one. If it can’t be verified, it can’t be used….” However, the Supreme Court stepped in to stop the recount, leaving Ion with many unanswered questions. Many unanswered questions indeed. There were far too numerous “irregularities” in the election for me to list here. I’ll sum it up by saying, at least 90% of documented cases had votes swing in Bush’s favor.

Here is one of the most significant:

In Volusia county Florida, Al Gore received 16,022 negative votes – that’s minus 16,022 votes from his overall vote total. Investigations into the matter concluded that it couldn’t have been machine error because the machine only had wrong numbers for the presidential election. Which means that the machine was illegally tampered with (hacked).

This problem occurred on a Diebold system. Internal Diebold documents revealed that someone “subtracted 16,022 votes from Al Gore, and in still some undefined way, added 4000 erroneous votes to George W. Bush.” Another internal memo from Lana Hires states: “I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16,022 [votes] when it was uploaded.”

Bev Harris of BlackBox voting discovered a CBS News report that stated that the missing votes were directly responsible for them calling the election for Bush. Fox News’ election analyst John Ellis was the first to call the election for Bush. Ellis is a cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush.

While it has been proven that Gore actually won the Florida election anyhow, it has been “officially” recorded that Bush won the state by only 537 votes.

Additionally, on a national level, there was an MIT study that revealed 1.5 – 2 million votes were not even counted.